Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Life

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He had an older sister, Willie Christine (September 11, 1927) and a younger brother, Albert Daniel (July 30, 1930 – July 21, 1969). King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. He entered Morehouse College at age fifteen, skipping his ninth and twelfth high school grades without formally graduating. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) degree in 1951. In September 1951, King began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) on June 5, 1955.

Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

Martin Luther King did several things of importance throughout his career of trying to activate peace in the U.S.  One important thing he has done is talk about his dream and his visions about how we could live in togetherness in his "I Have a Dream" speech.

By writing this speech, he has talked a lot about how "whites" and "blacks" should hold hand in hand together and live amongst each other in peace.